Below the Trapdoors
by gray seal
Summary: Christine and Raoul flee from the roof, and in their flight, they discover why Erik is considered the trapdoor lover. Leroux based, one-shot.


**Disclaimer: I do not own the Phantom of the Opera**

**This is just a little thing that's been running through my head for a little while. After Christine tells Raoul about Erik, they run away from the roof, and while they are fleeing, they bump into the Persian who guides them towards a different direction. What was he keeping them from? What would have happened of Daroga wasn't there at all? It's supposed to be morbid... and it's E/C... sort of...**

**Thanks, Arcelia, for your diligence and patience with me!  
**

**Enjoy, and leave a review on your way out, please!  
**

* * *

Christine knew they were safe. Even if they were still in the Opera House, Erik would never venture above the cellars, and he was busy with his masterpiece. He had promised he would never bother her, or Raoul, until she had to descend into his lair, where she knew he would never let her go. She knew that he wanted her to marry him. No, he didn't know that she knew, and she would not tell Raoul about it for fear that he would hate her teacher more than he did now.

The sky was cool and clear, filled with white, twinkling stars—no yellow ones. The snow was beginning to melt away, and she could feel springtime peeking around the corner. She wanted to tell everything _here_, away from all the trapdoors and hidden passageways. She didn't know if she could trust _him _to stay away; _he_ always seemed to hear everything she said. A week after she started the engagement game with Raoul—and such a lovely game—_he _had called her down to him, and she stayed in his house for two days. He rebuked her for her disloyalty, and she had begged him not to worry. Raoul would be leaving soon, and she was trying to distract him from all of his silly questions.

"You do not care for the boy, no?" he had asked, his eyes suddenly anxious.

"No, I care nothing at all for him. He is only a childhood friend."

"Is he being bothersome with all his questions, because if he is, I can take care of him…"

"No! No, it is nothing. He will be gone in a little while, up to the North Pole. And he will not return."

He stood still, pondering on her words, and then he said, "I trust you Christine. M. de Chagny is in love with you," he spat the words as if they tasted foul, "and is going abroad. Before he goes, I want him to be as happy as I am." He said the last part pitifully and morosely, as if he were not happy at all. She wondered briefly if people were so unhappy when they were in love.

Christine dragged herself from her musing, and began telling Raoul everything. She did not know why she was telling him about Erik. Perhaps it was because she was tired of lying to them—both of them. But why did she not speak to Erik instead? Raoul would be leaving in a few days, and she knew she would have to marry Erik soon. There was no alternative. Besides, Raoul was so much easier to speak to. She did not have to choose her words as carefully for fear that her listener might fly into a storming rage, and she did not feel like going through the ordeal of being scrutinized under _his_ yellow gaze.

It felt like such a relief to tell him the truth. The burden of being the only one who knew about Erik lifted and dissipated from her shoulders, and she felt like she could breathe again. Everything she told him was the truth… more or less. She exaggerated slightly, but most of it was the truth. But when Raoul asked her if she love the poor creature, she lied again. She could not say no, neither could she say yes—besides, she knew that Raoul would not want to hear her say that she loved her kidnapper, her oppressor. If anyone was to know whether she loved Erik or not, it was to be Erik. She avoided the question and told a horrible, nasty lie.

She told Raoul that she loved him.

And then she kissed him.

The peace of the night was shattered with cries of grief, and Christine tore herself away from Raoul's tender embrace. She tugged him away, and as they escaped, they turned to see an enormous black shadow sitting atop Apollo's lyre and two blazing points of light. The lights shone down upon the couple, seeming to glint with anger and betrayal, and she tried to tell herself that they were only stars. There was nothing to fear from them. Erik was not there; he was composing.

But her logic failed her; she ran, blind with the fear that Erik would have heard the warning cry of the night-bird that watched over them while she and Raoul shared their first kiss. The corridors were empty and eerily quiet, and shadows watched them as they fled from the roof. Raoul tried to stop when they were nearly to the first floor, but Christine urged him on, feeling that they would not be safe until they were hidden in her dressing room. It was the one sanctuary she had from Erik. Perhaps she should have told Raoul everything there, instead of under the canopy of the stars.

At the hallway to her room, though, she kept on going. Raoul started down to her room, but hesitated when he saw that she was still running.

"Christine?" he called uncertainly.

"Come, we must go _this_ way!"

"But Christine," he started again. "Your room is over here."

"I know, dear, but we must be sure that _he_ isn't watching!"

He followed her. They ran across the empty stage, and no one but the shadows were there. Christine squinted into the shadows and searched for little pinpoints of watchful lights, but she could see no sign of the blazing stars. She led Raoul down through another corridor, empty and dusty. Raoul started at the sight. It wasn't just empty, but the drafty hallway gave him the impression that no one had been down it for a long while. He didn't trust it to be safe, but Christine knew there was another way to her dressing room. _He_ had never taken her down here and, somehow, she felt that _he_ would not follow.

Seeing Raoul balk again, she reached for him and tugged on his arm.

"Come, Raoul!" she whispered hoarsely. "_He_ never comes this way!"

His trembling lips parted. "And for good reason, I suppose."

She shook her head adamantly. "Wherever _he_ isn't, we are safe, Raoul. It must be!"

Warily, he nodded and began to follow her. The empty corridor that seemed to scream danger went on for a long while, even at their quick pace. Christine could hear Raoul unconsciously holding his breath, and every time he gasped from lack of air, he jumped at the sudden sound. Under different circumstances, she would have laughed, but she could feel something strange in the air, a sort of foreboding that kept her from doing so. She slipped her clammy hand into Raoul's, hoping for some comfort, but found that his hand was just as sweaty as her own. It didn't help to relieve the mounting fear in her heart.

The hallway got progressively darker, and the floor seemed to slope downwards. This realization made her heart jump to her throat, but she said nothing to Raoul. It was getting harder to see where to place her feet in the fading light, and she wondered if they might have taken a wrong turn. She could hear little creatures scurrying and scratching on the floor with their little claws, and it sent shivers up and down her spine. The air hummed and resonated with the silence, uncomfortably pressing against their eardrums, interrupted only with the harsh breathing from her and Raoul's lips and the occasional sound of a rat squealing to its companions. She clung to Raoul's hand until her hand ached with the effort.

_Drip…_

Christine jumped and looked around with wide eyes into the darkness.

_Drip…_

They had gone too far. In fact, they were not supposed to even have come this way. The path was definitely leading down… down to Erik's lair.

"Raoul," she whispered, but she might as well have shouted for the way her voice broke the silence, making them both jump in fear and glance furtively about. "Maybe we should go back."

"Yes," he said eagerly, as though he had wanted to say so long ago, but was too frightened to say it himself.

They turned around and hastily made their way back, but they did not go far. It was a miracle that they had even lasted so long in the sinister corridor without triggering any of Erik's traps, but their luck fell through when Christine stepped on a small button in the floor. Small, but her foot found it and depressed it into the floor, which immediately gave way and disappeared from beneath the two wayward wanderers. They fell and fell through the eternal darkness, and both of them knew that the trap-door lover had been at work in their final moments. Their screams echoed for hours in the cold, dank air, long after they had ended.

There was a reason why Erik had never taken her down that hallway.

* * *

Several days later, a very distressed Erik made his way through the cellars back to his home when he discovered a very repulsive smell.

Someone had fallen into his traps.

It was the first time he had come down to his home since Christine and her lover had disappeared. He had spent the entire time searching for them, looking for any indication that they might have left the city.

He had found nothing—no sign of them. If they had left, then both of them had left without anything but the clothes on their backs. Christine had even forgotten to take her father's precious violin.

Dutifully, for he had nothing else left to do but die, he went to look for the intruder. He didn't have very far to look; the body was lying on the shore of the lake. He observed it for a moment—a female, with golden hair like Christine. He hated it when the curious women ventured down to his lair. It meant that another female had died by his hands. But then, it wasn't his fault that they came down to his home at all, and he had to protect his privacy. No one but he was allowed down in the dark and cold depths of the Opera House.

He turned the bundle of broken bones over and was about to carry her away by the arms when he noticed her face.

Christine…

With a sharp gasp, he fell to his knees.

"No," he moaned, a trembling hand hovering over her frozen lips.

He looked around, searching for the boy, but he was nowhere to be found. Unbeknownst to him, Raoul's body had slipped into the water and was now floating around somewhere in the lake's labyrinth. Soon, the carcass would slowly sink to the floor of the lake, and Erik would never find it—and even if he did, he would only find a pile of decaying, unrecognizable bones. He would never know that those bones once belonged to Raoul de Chagny.

So Erik was left to assume that Christine was coming back to him, and he had killed her.

He tenderly picked up her broken body and carried her away, put her into his coffin, and climbed in with her. He didn't notice the smell any longer. He lay there, day in and day out, ignoring his needs and staring into her beautiful face—beautiful even as it began to dry and shrivel and turn into a death's head just as his own.

Slipping the ring onto her lovely finger—she had dropped it while on the roof—he waited until he joined her in death.

His dead wife. That was all he would ever have, a dead wife. He had been a fool, thinking they could live happily together. It wasn't possible for him. He killed everything.

Her name was his dying breath.


End file.
